Senate Going Postal: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

@A Chorus of Disapproval
There was this good English movie on the subject, of the little kid that ends up in a neo-nazi group. This is England.
They kind of put into movie the situation you just described, but I think it was set during Thatcher's era.

 

I’ve started reading Mary Trump’s book and I can already see that she is a superb writer.

“Mike Pence lurked on the other side of the room with a half-dead smile on his face, like the chaperone everybody wanted to avoid.”

Best description I’ve read of him to date.

 

Every time I see Mike Pence's narrow little half-smile I'm reminded of those Tom Clancy Cold War era novels where he always described the dead tell of Soviet spies was they only smiled from the nose down. The smile never showed in their eyes. Not to suggest that Pence is a Russian stooge. He's too much of an actual stooge for anyone other than Trump to put on the payroll.

 

My hard cover was delayed to first week of August. I kept that one which I'll give to my mom and ordered a kindle version for myself. I forgot I had bought a new kindle a while back. Now I have a reason to use it.

 

Speaking of Mary Trump's book, this just sums it up I think:

 

As a campaigning tool for 2020, I'd say it's fair game. If you want to understand why he was elected in 2016, it's looking for the right answers to the wrong questions.

Before the COVID crisis, the middle and lower classes still hadn't recovered the losses from the 2008 crisis. And before that, blue collar jobs were already lost at a steady pace. It's taken a while for China to get to the point where its much cheaper products add up to a worth that's 150% of what the USA's industry produces.

And even when they hadn't done the maths or looked at it, it's not too hard for the average person to notice they're struggling more than they used to, or that a lot of jobs and factories which used to exist around you no longer do. A lot of people had noticed back in 2016, and had aired grievances about it for a while. And where, as a whole, the Obama presidency did manage to get the USA's economy back to where it was during the crisis, it was entirely ineffective at preventing that being entirely the result of the rich having gotten a lot richer than they used to.

And that's about to get a lot worse thanks to the current crisis.

The Clinton campaign, which was following 8 years of Democrat presidency, did a horrible job at addressing that. It hardly talked about economic recovery for the lower and middle classes, and their hardships. It did, however, make a point of underlining that demographics meant the vote of white men wasn't needed anymore. And when one's concerns are ignored and they're outright told their vote is unnecessary, it's hardly surprising that their category turns out in lesser numbers. Which, indeed, didn't matter in most states - but did in the Rust Belt, where the election was lost.

And it's not like there weren't people on their side who had noticed those white and blue collar concerns. They were listened to by the Sanders side - but that side lost (twice, now). And if anything, the 2020 primaries proved conclusively that winning predominantly white states early doesn't help when you seek to win the Democrat primary, and clearly showed that pushing much harder than the other guys on social welfare doesn't win you the primary either.

In 2016, the Trump campaign, on the other hand, made a show of listening. Not only that, they provided someone to blame (multiple someones, even), and promises that the jobs and the money would go back to the "little guy". They were BSing, of course, but between the candidate who tells you your vote isn't important because your demographic category doesn't matter (what was the word Clinton used again? "despicables"?) and the candidate who at least tries to make you believe things will get better for you if you put [X] back in their place, the second's argument is more likely to convince you to turn out than the first's.

It's something to consider for 2020 and later elections, by the way. Even if the current configuration is a lot less favorable to Trump than 2016's was and it's likely the Biden campaign can get away with ignoring the impoverishment of the lower and middle classes, they're in the middle of getting screwed even harder than before. The Republicans certainly won't help - they want these categories staying impoverished and angry, and ready to rage against a designated enemy while they keep screwing them. But if another 4 or 8 years of Democrat presidency don't tell the story of how they're going to get the little guy back in the black and make a good go of it, they're not getting back the white working class vote they gave up that gave Trump just enough of a boost to beat them in 2016, and they're going to lose a good chunk more of the working class vote in general.

 

Anyond else remember Beto?

 

The best part of that commercial is them putting in the soundbyte of Biden saying "yes, absolutely" as if that's 100% conclusive proof and not that he could be saying "yes, absolutely" to anything.

 

Also, Mary Trump's book is very good. She definitely took this from the lens of a child psychologist. And wow was Fred Trump a horrible person. I thought he was bad, but really he was much, much worse. And you can see exactly how his worst traits passed directly to Donald. It doesn't excuse anything, but it certainly explains a lot.

 

I wonder how much money Mary Trump will make off her book? Probably a lot.

 

How anybody can still be reading books about Trump in their spare time is beyond me.

 

Liberals never admit this, but they love Trump because he makes them feel smart, and will miss him when he goes away, like they do for every Republican president.

 

No need to "libruls" it, I just think KW could find much better use for his valuable time. Do things that are more positive.

 

To be honest, this is the first one I was interested in reading and the only one I ordered (and I didn't do so until late last week). And its precisely because of her background and how she analyzes the family that drew me in. This is not a book just on Donald. Its the whole family. Its about how Fred Trump was formed, how he destroyed his oldest son and the damage he inflicted on all of his children and grandchildren. But it also discusses how he made his fortune and the 'values' he instilled into Donald. Even from a case study point of view, it's a fascinating read. But for those looking to determine whether Trump is smarter or more dangerous than we think, well there is that as well.

And no, you won't come away with pity for Trump. If anything, she validates that he was a terrible child who grew up to be a terrible adult who then went on to be a terrible president. But, she does explain that the delusions we've seen him perpetuate have always been there. True, he might actually have a form of dementia now, but it is almost indistinguishable from his behavior he exhibited all his life. I've finished the first part and am onto the second.

 

[НУЖНА ЦИТАТА]

 

The irony of liberals' critique of Trump is that while they lament the dumbing down of politics into personality-driven entertainment, that is precisely the lens through which their media examines Trump because it is based on the Sorkin framework of virtuous strong men. It's all the Trump Show, 24/7, he is the center of their political universe.

 

I'll buy that Kanye West isn't running for President when he says it. Twice. Over the course of several days not just randomly saying it. How do write in votes work, is there literally a blank space on every voting slip for a write in? Where I am there's no write in, it's Scantron fill in the circle with the #2 pencil all the way.

 

If we were in the habit of doing more valuable things with our time, we wouldn't be posting here.

 

My interest is on multiple levels. One of them is that Mary Trump is an excellent writer-- that alone is compelling to me. The writing is sophisticated and self-aware, by which I mean that she writes about things that are publicly known in a way that is original or different than what's come before. To do that requires a knowledge of what's come before you, and/or to be so fundamentally different as a person from most people that what you say is inevitably going to be your own and no one else's. So, just on a formal level, I'm interested.

The overarching story is darkly fascinating as well. I think it's as much about Fred Trump as Donald Trump, and the warped nature of white America can be seen in part through it and them. They're representative of more than just themselves. They're both unique and all-too-common at the same time. White businessmen get rich through a bit of skill, a lot more luck, connections, and fraud-- to some degree, that's the real American dream.

Mary Trump writes about her family in general and Donald Trump in particular as people who happen to be famous, rather than the other way around. All the existing "tell-all" books can't match this because none of them have been written by people who have known him or them as long as Mary Trump has. She's one of them, and that goes a long way toward writing an authentic story.

 

The much bigger issues at play here are your rather odd statements about "liberals". Talk about painting everyone with the same brush, no nuance whatsoever. You are basically making up straw-men every time you do this, by pretending that there is one coherent group like that, which shares entirely the same views. There isn't.

 

Self-identifying leftists like myself have been using the term "liberals" in this thread for over a year. If you don't know what we mean by it, you haven't been paying attention, and there's nothing wrong with that either! You don't have to self-identify with my critique or the term if you don't want to.